Family recalls Lady Bird

Published 9:38 pm, Saturday, December 22, 2012

Catherine Robb's eyes blurred with tears and she paused, overcome by the emotion of tryinsg to find the right words to express how much she misses "Nini" -- the affectionate name she called her grandmother, Lady Bird Johnson.

After all, the nation's former first lady, catapulted into history after President John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination in Dallas, came closer than she ever expected to attending her 100th birthday celebration Saturday. She died at her Texas Hill Country ranch in 2007 at age 94.

"My grandmother probably never thought she'd get that old. After all, her mother died very young when my grandmother was only 5," said Robb. By comparison, Lady Bird founded the National Wildflower Research Center in Austin on her 70th birthday and was still swimming laps in her late 80s. Only one other presidential wife, Bess Truman, lived longer.

In 2002, Lady Bird was slowed by a debilitating stroke. She completely lost her voice and macular degeneration claimed her eyesight.

"Even though her body was no longer cooperating with her, she managed to find different ways to communicate through her expressions or jotting things down. She also utilized audiobooks," said Robb, 42, an Austin lawyer, who for many years had a standing dinner date with her grandmother nearly every Thursday night. "She found ways to keep up with what was happening with her family and the world until very close to the end."

Her centennial celebration is being commemorated by the U.S. Postal Service with the release of a stamp featuring her in a canary yellow gown from her official White House portrait; a wildflower sculpture made in her honor; and a massive, multimillion-dollar renovation of the LBJ Presidential Library, to be unveiled Saturday and that for the first time features excerpts from 643 hours of telephone conversations that President Johnson secretly recorded of his political dealings in that era.

His speechwriter and the library's former director, Harry Middleton, said LBJ had ordered the tapes sealed until 50 years after his death. He credits Lady Bird for being "very brave and gutsy" to permit the public to hear them decades earlier.

Lady Bird herself was recorded without her knowledge. In one excerpted conversation, the president asks her impression of a major news conference speech he made in 1964; Lady Bird tells him how he might have improved it, and grades him with a "B-plus."

Middleton said few were aware that Lady Bird had a biting wit.

He recalled a remark she made in 1968 after her husband's excruciating decision not to seek another term in the White House due to the Vietnam War turmoil. That decision triggered many invitations from well-wishers. After one especially exhausting night of nonstop partying, he recalled, Lady Bird leaned her head back in the car and using a line parodying antiwar protesters said, "I don't know why I didn't just say, `Hell, no, I won't go!' "

Robb said her grandparents felt the added stress of watching both their daughters' husbands sent into combat. Robb's mother, Linda Johnson Robb, left the White House as the bride of a U.S. Marine captain who survived the war and later became a Virginia governor and U.S. senator.